An enemy that'll make a nest out of your base!

[cptepicness]

After playing the game for a long time I feel like I have an idea for changing up enemies and defense.

It would be interesting to see a wasp-like enemy, they make a small nestand then expanding as it grows.

The base of the idea goes on this. Some parts of a players base are left undefended (mostly outside mining outposts a player forgets to defend with turrets). That undefended area is usually left at the mercy of biters & spitters. (unless the player has no nearby nest of those things to cause a mess)
>Now enter the wasp-like enemy, which i'll be now referring to as "Stingers"

1. Stingers will appear after Meduim Biters become present.
*A Small Stinger can easily take out an unarmored player.
*Stingers can be easily taken out by turrets, but they can fly over walls. Big Stingers will of course pose a problem to turrets

2. Stingers DO NOT attack the players base. Instead, they turn the players base into their OWN nest.
*This renders the machine the Stinger took over completely useless.
*Stingers are not directly hostile to the player even if the player walks too close to them (Specifically away from the nest)
*Stingers will SWARM a player if the player gets too close to the nest.
*A nest starts small. When the nest it is fully grown three stingers will go to a nearby machine and colonize on it.(Basically making a new nest on the machine)

3. Stingers prey on biters and spitters. A Small Stinger can take out Medium Biters fairly well.
*A group of spitters can pose a threat to a Small Stinger
*Worms serve as the only natural defense for Stingers as they can easily kill Stingers. Possible reason for why biter/spitter nests are found near Worms.

4. Stingers are not effected by pollution and do not evolve from it. Instead, they evolve from the biters and spitters they have killed.
*Stingers will actually prefer to nest in HEAVILY polluted areas on the purpose of farming biters and spitters!
*Small/Medium Stingers will not try to colonize in heavily polluted areas until Big Stingers start to appear.
*In the event of a new nest the usual three Small Stingers will be escorted by a group of 2-4 Big Stingers (The group of three will attract the closest Big Stingers in the area)
*If a nest is left to develop too long, Big Stingers will be a major problem as they pose a major threat to turrets because they can fly over walls. Leaving even defended outposts at risk.



>Summary: Idea is the "Stinger". A wasp-like enemy that'll colonize on your machines and fly over walls. This puts a more bigger urge to defend your posts with a simple turret defense. They'll pose a problem as time goes on without dealing with them. They prey on biters and spitters, they also evolve from killing them. A Stinger could be used as a natural defense against biters, but cons out weigh the pros. Eventually, the Stinger will become a bigger problem then the Biter or Spitter as they will aggressively try to turn your base into their nest!

[vampiricdust]

Wow, well, that adds a whole new ball game. I like it. I'd love to mess around with it as a mod as it would add a biological twist to base defenses. Though when I came here I was going to mention a mod already is here that I've used to make the biters try to expand into your factories so you'll get larger and more frequent raids. In my playing of it I was going hit by 2 or 3 nests almost constantly. Even cleaning them out, they came back rather quick.

[ssilk]

Wow. That's a cool idea. I've played around with enemies, that kills others, but this one made the turn by shrinking one enemy to the players creations.

Question: where do the stingers came from? I mean: in the beginning there are no players buildings, where they are then?
Can construction robots take them out, too?
I did not quite correctly understand, what you meant with

*Stingers are not directly hostile to the player even if the player walks too close to them (Specifically away from the nest)
*Stingers will SWARM a player if the player gets too close to the nest.

There is too much room for interpretation.

I would also add, that an occupied building slowly breaks down. After one to three days it's gone and the stingers must search a new place. Which is the nearest next building.

[MF-]

Perhaps they could build their hives on trees when no dry place is available.

Perhaps the building "taken over" will still works for the player for some time,
before they accidentally jam something inside (and cause an alert)

This suggestion seems to come suspicously handy related to https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=9418
As if someone was just too lazy to remember/store/write down a password


The only thing I'm not sure about is the CPU/GPU cost of having two alien races fight.
The thing that biters are idle when no player/polution is around spares a lot of computation time.
That's the only hiccup to this amazing idea I could think of.

[cptepicness]

Question: where do the stingers came from? I mean: in the beginning there are no players buildings, where they are then?

If I were to put an origin of the stinger, I'd say it is a migratory predator, nesting were ever food is plenty and housing is available.
In the beginning, there were biter nests. Stingers would originally prey on small nests and turn them into Stinger nests. The problem with using biter nests is that they were a bit fragile and would fall apart too easily.
>Enter the player
The player is unnoticed by the enemies of factorio in the beginning. Pollution was minimum and only the closest nests would notice. Now enter the later part in the players development in the base, pollution is a lot more noticeable to enemies causing them to even evolve into bigger, stronger enemies. (Meduim Biter)
Stingers could no longer prey easily on the biters and spitters of factorio, so they search to find a more easier place to nest in.
Stingers are not affected by the pollution but do notice biters and spitters follow were the pollution goes to. As a migratory predator the Stingers follow their prey to this new location.
>Enter the Stringer in player base
Stingers notice machines that can provide far more than the squishy biter nests. The way a stinger mind works is to find the best structure/home to make a nest, conquer it, feed off of it, and repeat.
The Stingers are intelligent enemies. They know the player has made these structures, but they don't find the player very appetizing so they won't directly attack the player. The stinger will not attack the player unless the player attacks first or gets too near the nest. (Hope that explains that attack part)

Can construction robots take them out, too?

I would also add, that an occupied building slowly breaks down. After one to three days it's gone and the stingers must search a new place. Which is the nearest next building.

Interesting idea, I was sort of thinking the building could still be used even if the Stinger has taken over, just significantly slower.
The Stingers block the construction robots from being able to "repair" the building. Eventually the building breaks down and the Stingers search for the next closest building to call home.

[ssilk]

Some thoughts I want to add:

- so the player is able to create some kind of swarm around him (like destroyer capsules), by getting near to a nest, run to the next biter nest and the stingers will do the rest.
- interesting strategy for multiplayer. Find: a stinger nest, run to other side, infect players base.
- also true for yourself: before you enter your base, you must disinfect all stingers, swarming around you.
- they might be able to use your electricity a lot, or eventually better: they have a chance to create an electric short, which eats all your accu power within seconds. Of course they love to do that in the night.
- I think stinger nests should be normally in some special trees, or big rocks.
- if there is a natural avenger for the biters, we need also an avenger for stingers!
- what about the worms?

It's also kind of interesting, how good the other suggestion matches with this one https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=9418

[quinor]

That sounds awesome. I started to think about taming these creatures (like real-world bees, but bigger and more dangerous) and using them instead of wall then. We'd also need some special kind of insecticide to counter them though...

[FishSandwich]

Kinda reminds me of the infest ability the Zerg Queen unit had...

I like it!

[cptepicness]

- what about the worms?
It's also kind of interesting, how good the other suggestion matches with this one https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=9418

I did read that suggestion before creating my suggestion. It may have influenced some parts of it to be honest
I completely forgot about worms!

Worms will be the only natural defense against Stingers. Stingers take no interest in Worms and are easily killed by Worms too (Similar to how the player can be easily killed by worms as well)
Biters/Spitters will choose to make their nests were ever Worms are present, the Worms neither benefit or get harmed with this relationship. They will however attack Stingers whenever they feel a Stinger enter their territory (Similar to how the player triggers a worm by stepping into it's range)

[MF-]

Interesting idea, I was sort of thinking the building could still be used even if the Stinger has taken over, just significantly slower.Eventually the building breaks down and the Stingers search for the next closest building to call home.

I also expected the building to work. Stingers didn't literally take over, they just call it their home and defend it.
Gradual slowdown as they interfere with the operations sound good to me.

Also allows for the invasion to go unnoticed for the while, which is I think desirable.
Since the machinery isn't directly attacked at all, the alert might as well be raised when
the jamming-up process reaches 50% or something.

The destruction of the machine as jams up completely with potentially-organic material
could be just explained by that - jammed up machinery might overheat and that material might be flammable.

The gradual jamming give me this idea:
The power consumption should rise a bit over time as the machine counters more resistance.